On examination, the woman proved to be the missing servant-girl. She was pregnant, and had evidently been murdered with a surgeon’s instrument, which was found entangled among her clothes. Upon this, in consequence of his known connection with her, and his implied self-accusation to the inspectors, the young man was apprehended on suspicion of being the guilty party, and tried upon the circuit. He was the last person seen in her company, immediately previous to her disappearance; and there was, altogether, such strong presumptive evidence against him, as corroborated by what occurred on the green would have justified a verdict of guilty. But, strange to say, this last most important item in the evidence failed, and he established an incontrovertible alibi; it being proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that he had been in church from the beginning of the service to the end of it. He was, therefore, acquitted; while the public were left in the greatest perplexity, to account as they could for this extraordinary discrepancy. The young man was well known to the inspectors, and it was in broad daylight that they had met him and placed his name in their books. Neither, it must be remembered, were they seeking for him, nor thinking of him, nor of the woman, about whom there existed neither curiosity nor suspicion. Least of all, would they have sought her where she was, but for the hint given to them.
The interest excited, at the time, was very great; but no natural explanation of the mystery has ever been suggested.
CHAPTER IX.
APPARITIONS.
The number of stories on record, which seem to support the views I have suggested in my last chapter, is, I fancy, little suspected by people in general; and still less is it imagined that similar occurrences are yet frequently taking place. I had, indeed, myself no idea of either one circumstance or the other, till my attention being accidentally turned in this direction, I was led into inquiries, the result of which has extremely surprised me. I do not mean to imply that all my acquaintance are ghost-seers, or that these things happen every day; but the amount of what I do mean, is this: first, that besides the numerous instances of such phenomena alluded to in history, which have been treated as fables by those who profess to believe the rest of the narratives, though the whole rests upon the same foundation, that is, tradition and hearsay; besides these, there exists in one form or another, hundreds and hundreds of recorded cases, in all countries, and in all languages, exhibiting that degree of similarity which mark them as belonging to a class of facts, many of these being of a nature which seems to preclude the possibility of bringing them under the theory of spectral illusions; and, secondly, that I scarcely meet any one man or woman, who, if I can induce them to believe I will not publish their names, and am not going to laugh at them, is not prepared to tell me of some occurrence of the sort, as having happened to themselves, their family, or their friends. I admit that in many instances they terminate their narration, by saying, that they think it must have been an illusion, because they can not bring themselves to believe in ghosts; not unfrequently adding, that they wish to think so; since to think otherwise would make them uncomfortable. I confess, however, that this seems to me a very unwise, as well as a very unsafe way of treating the matter. Believing the appearance to be an illusion, because they can not bring themselves to believe in ghosts, simply amounts to saying, “I don’t believe, because I don’t believe;” and is an argument of no effect, except to invalidate their capacity for judging the question, at all; but the second reason for not believing, namely, that they do not wish to do so, has not only the same disadvantage, but is liable to much more serious objections; for it is our duty to ascertain the truth in an affair that concerns every soul of us so deeply; and to shrink from looking at it, lest it should disclose something we do not like, is an expedient as childish as it is desperate.
In reviewing my late novel of “Lilly Dawson,” where I announce the present work, I observe that while some of the reviewers scout the very idea of anybody’s believing in ghosts, others, less rash, while they admit that it is a subject we know nothing about, object to further investigation, on account of the terrors and uncomfortable feelings that will be engendered. Now, certainly, if it were a matter in which we had no personal concern, and which belonged merely to the region of speculative curiosity, everybody would be perfectly justified in following their inclinations with regard to it; there would be no reason for frightening themselves, if they did not like it; but, since it is perfectly certain that the fate of these poor ghosts, be what it may, will be ours some day—perhaps before another year or another week has passed over our heads—to shut our eyes to the truth, because it may perchance occasion us some uncomfortable feelings, is surely a strange mixture of contemptible cowardice and daring temerity. If it be true that, by some law of nature, departed souls occasionally revisit the earth, we may be quite certain that it was intended we should know it, and that the law is to some good end; for no law of God can be purposeless or mischievous; and is it conceivable that we should say we will not know it, because it is disagreeable to us? Is not this very like saying, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!” and yet refusing to inquire what is to become of us when we do die? refusing to avail ourselves of that demonstrative proof which God has mercifully placed within our reach? And, with all this obstinacy, people do not get rid of the apprehension; they go on struggling against it and keeping it down by argument and reason; but there are very few persons indeed, men or women, who, when placed in a situation calculated to suggest the idea, do not feel the intuitive conviction striving within them. In the ordinary circumstances of life, nobody suffers from this terror; in the extraordinary ones, I find the professed disbelievers not much better off than the believers. Not long ago, I heard a lady expressing the great alarm she should have felt, had she been exposed to spend a whole night on Ben Lomond, as Margaret Fuller, the American authoress, did lately; “for,” said she, “though I don’t believe in ghosts, I should have been dreadfully afraid of seeing one then!”
Moreover, though I do not suppose that man, in his normal state, could ever encounter an incorporeal spirit without considerable awe, I am inclined to think that the extreme terror the idea inspires arises from bad training. The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just belief enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it. Now, perhaps, if the thing were differently managed, the result might be different. Suppose the subject were duly investigated, and it were ascertained that the views which I and many others are disposed to entertain with regard to it are correct,—and suppose, then, children were calmly told that it is not impossible but that, on some occasion, they may see a departed friend again—that the laws of nature, established by an allwise Providence, admit of the dead sometimes revisiting the earth, doubtless for the benevolent purpose of keeping alive in us our faith in a future state—that death is merely a transition to another life, which it depends on ourselves to make happy or otherwise—and that while those spirits which appear bright and blessed may well be objects of our envy, the others should excite only our intense compassion: I am persuaded that a child so educated would feel no terror at the sight of an apparition, more especially as there very rarely appears to be anything terrific in the aspect of these forms; they generally come in their “habits as they lived,” and appear so much like the living person in the flesh, that where they are not known to be already dead, they are frequently mistaken for them. There are exceptions to this rule,—but the forms in themselves rarely exhibit anything to create alarm.
As a proof that a child would not naturally be terrified at the sight of an apparition, I will adduce the following instance, the authenticity of which I can vouch for:—
A lady with her child embarked on board a vessel at Jamaica, for the purpose of visiting her friends in England, leaving her husband behind her quite well. It was a sailing packet; and they had been some time at sea, when one evening, while the child was kneeling before her saying his prayers previous to going to rest, he suddenly said: “Mamma, papa!” “Nonsense, my dear!” the mother answered, “you know your papa is not here!”—“He is indeed, mamma,” returned the child, “he is looking at us now.” Nor could she convince him to the contrary. When she went on deck, she mentioned the circumstance to the captain, who thought it so strange, that he said he would note down the date of the occurrence. The lady begged him not to do so, saying it was attaching a significance to it which would make her miserable. He did it, however; and, shortly after her arrival in England, she learned that her husband had died exactly at that period.